


Warm Me Up

by Cavanaughpark09



Category: Cormoran Strike Series - Robert Galbraith, Strike (TV 2017)
Genre: Banter, F/M, Fluff and Smut, Kissing, My First Smut, One Shot, Oral Sex, Post-Troubled Blood, Smut, Strike's coat, Surveillance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-23
Updated: 2020-11-23
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:33:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27678134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cavanaughpark09/pseuds/Cavanaughpark09
Summary: What starts as a late night of surveillance turns into a weekend inconvenienced by a snow. But proximity gets things done.
Relationships: Robin Ellacott & Cormoran Strike, Robin Ellacott/Cormoran Strike
Comments: 19
Kudos: 96





	Warm Me Up

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to @BlueRobinWrites for being an amazing beta. And countless members of the Denmark Street discord for cheerleading.
> 
> This will make more sense if you've read Bookclub.

_Come closer to me, baby_

_I've got everything you need_

_To fill your hunger pains for tonight_

_Warm me up beneath the sheets, babe_

_I've heard all about how you can save_

_I don't wanna go a day without you_

-

-

There was nothing, Robin had discovered, that she hated more than following university students. It wasn’t one single reason, but more a collection of all the absurd trends and social norms that seemed to be impressed on university girls.

First, they were out entirely too late. It was past four in the morning and the three girls that she had been following all night were just crossing into Russell Square on their way back to their dormitories near the university proper.

Robin had done all-night surveillance before, regularly even, but usually she was able to do it from the confines of the Land Rover with a thermos of tea and a thick coat, instead of following three pissed girls in skimpy clothes as they weaved across the pavement. 

The second thing she hated was the attire, the short skirts and the high heels, not to mention a coat that was barely thick enough to keep the wind from cutting through and chilling her to the bone. Perhaps the copious pints the girls had downed throughout the night were giving them a false sense of warmth against the late February night. She was stone sober.

Robin remembered her first two years of university, dressing the exact same way, and doing the same things. With an additional decade and surveillance experience under her belt,she had taken serious steps to ensure she wouldn’t suffer quite so much in the cold. Her dress was short, but the one shouldered frock featured a long sleeve, and there were sheer, warm tights covering her legs. Her boots featured a wedge heel and a sturdy bottom that meant she hadn’t slipped once on the icy pavement. Her coat was as thick as possible but was short and drafty.

Robin slowed as the girls came up on their dormitory, laughing loudly together and shouting into the night. It made her smile as good memories flooded to the surface. She slid her phone from her pocket, snapping a few photos as she passed them, their mark struggling with her keys in the lock.

When she came up on the corner she stopped, leaning against the academic building and watching as the lights in their flat turned on.

The case was both typical and out of the ordinary. They’d been hired by the university to investigate a professor in the English department who was rumored to be having an affair with a student. There had been an argument in the office in regard to who to follow.

The professor made more sense to Robin, since he was the one having the affair. They’d narrowed it down to three students, and with a single day of surveillance Michelle had ruled out one of them. It left them with three people to follow, her and Michelle on the students, and Barclay and Strike on the professor. There had been little activity during their first week, but the weekend was where they were expecting something, with less activity on campus.

When the lights flickered out in the flat again Robin shifted her focus back to the front door. It had been snowing lightly all night and she wasn’t really expecting the young woman to go back out and meet this professor at half four in the morning, but she needed to put in the effort. Nevertheless, she’d expected to be home hours earlier.

Michelle’s mark had spent a few hours in the library and gone home to bed. Michelle had texted her a final sign off well before midnight.

Barclay had been following the professor, who had gone to dinner with his wife and kids before spending a quiet night at home.

With no movement after twenty minutes Robin pushed off the brick wall and headed back toward Denmark street. She had a change of clothes at the office, several times warmer than the dress she’d been roaming round London in all night. Even though she wanted to be home and, in her bed, as soon as possible she wanted to be warm even more.

She took the main, well-lit roads on her way back, no longer safe in proximity to others. There was hardly anyone out in the piling snow, not even cars passing at regular intervals, but she still kept her hand around the rape alarm in her pocket until she’d let herself in the front door a Denmark Street.

She was quiet on the stairs, and letting herself into the office, knowing Strike would be asleep upstairs. Her clothes were in a holdall, full of disguise pieces, that she’d stored in the inner-office and she changed quickly. She replaced the dress with a cozy sweater, and the tights with the jeans she’d worn the day before, still stiff with salt from being outside in the snow. She slipped on warm socks and moved back to the main room where she’d left a more practical pair of boots, designed more for keeping out the snow than making her legs look long and slender.

As she picked them up she sighed, fully exhausted. If she left in the next few moments she wouldn’t be back to her flat until near half five and she’d agreed to be back at the office by nine for a debrief with Michelle and Barclay. Nearly four hours of sleep sounded better than barely two.

She dropped the boots back to the floor and flopped down onto the farting sofa, not even bothered by the noises it let out. She couldn’t stretch out fully on the loveseat, but after the long night of walking it felt just as comfortable as her bed. Vaguely she wondered if Strike still kept a spare blanket under his desk, but she was asleep before she could gather the strength to check.

-

Strike was woken the following morning by the violent sound that his mobile made as it vibrated across the table next to his bed. It was still dark outside, and he nearly dropped it to the floor as he fumbled to answer.

“Strike.”

“Have ye looked ootside? Checked the weather?” Barclay asked.

“No,” Strike replied, hazarding a guess. “Snow?”

“Near a foo’ in the past hour, mate. I’ve been up wi’ the wee one since near six. They’ve updated the forecast. It’s no’ supposed tae stop until tonight, another two o’ three feet and it’s messy. They’ve asked us tae stay aff the roads.”

Strike groaned into his pillow, struggling to remember the rota for the day. Barclay was coming into the office, along with Robin and Michelle. Pat didn’t work weekends, but Hutchins was supposed to be following Two Times’ latest fling, and Strike had questions to ask a lawyer friend of Ilsa’s for one of their cases. It sounded as though none of that would be happening.

“Stay home,” Strike told Barclay. “Email Michelle and Robin anything you’ve found that’s important and we’ll regroup on Monday. I’ll reach out to everyone else.”

“Cheers,” Barclay replied, “Ye best dae the same.”

As he rung off Strike could hear the shrill sounds of Barclay’s daughter screeching in the background of the call. It was a relief, if nothing else, that he wouldn’t be spending his weekend snowed in with a toddler.

He threw back the thick duvet and sat up, quickly putting on his prosthetic leg, before staggering across the room to the toilet.

He sent a series of texts to Michelle and Hutchins, not to come in, to send any updates to the team, and to enjoy an unexpected weekend off. He fired off an email to Ilsa’s friend about rescheduling.

Then he sent a separate text to Robin.

**Are you awake?**

He knew there were limited options in the fridge, so he dressed in layers, with the plan to make a trip to the Tesco and one of the nearby restaurants if they were still serving. By the time he’d shrugged on his coat and wrapped his scarf firmly around his neck there had still been no response from Robin so he sent another message.

**Stay home. Snow day.**

Once he reached the ground level, he tugged on the beanie hat Robin had given him for Christmas and pushed open the door. The cold air swirled in with thick flakes and the pavement was piled high with snow, but it looked as if a plow had been by recently. He lit a cigarette and shuffled along to the road, carefully placing his false foot so as not to wrench his knee. 

The road was slick, so it was slow going. At the Tesco he gathered beer, biscuits, and tea, and a few quick meals that he could heat on the hob or wouldn’t need cooking at all. 

The Chinese restaurant next door was still open, as it nearly always was, but Strike could tell they wouldn’t be open much longer, all the tables were empty. Even as a familiar waiter approached him, he was asking Strike if he’d like to place an order for takeaway.

He ordered enough food to last a few meals and sat to wait and nodded his thanks to the waiter, who brought him tea without a request.

In all he was gone for nearly an hour. He’d almost gone down a few times on his walk back to Denmark street, off balance with the bags weighing him down awkwardly. As he climbed the stairs, he shook out his coat, dusting off layers of snow and ice.

Upon reaching the third floor he stopped short, catching sight of a light on in the office. He stepped across the landing and was even more surprised to find the door unlocked. Scanning the main room, his hand relaxed on the knob when he found Robin’s prone form across the sofa, deep, even breaths betraying that she was securely in the holds of sleep. For a moment he stood frozen in the doorway, staring.

Robin had been on surveillance the night before. It must have run particularly late if she’d chosen to sleep there instead of going home. Her mobile was on the desk, her handbag and boots leaning against it, as though she’d been planning to go home but had made a decision to stay on the spot.

Despite the snow piling up outside he didn’t rouse her. If she’d chosen to sleep on the unwelcoming farting sofa, he wasn’t going to force her out into the snow before she had rested. She had two good legs and would have an easier time of it than he would.

Instead, he shrugged off his coat, shaking the last of the snow from the outside, and slowly, carefully draped it over her. She didn’t wake, but rather shifted with a sigh before settling again.

After stocking most of the groceries in the kitchenette fridge as quietly as he could, Strike proceeded to the inner office, leaving just the single lamp on, and opened his laptop.

There were emails from Barclay and Hutchins, detailing their observations from the night before, and one from Michelle with a quick message; there’d been no suspicious activity, and that she’d provide more detail once she was properly awake.

Strike was properly awake, which he found to be unfortunate, but with the weekend likely a dead-end for getting any new work done he knew a mid-day nap would not be out of the question. He opened a tin of dumplings and popped the first one into his mouth.

He began to copy Hutchins’ notes into the paper file for Two Times, now quite a sizable folder, committing the details of the new girlfriend’s boring habits to memory. 

-

Robin woke up slowly, dully registering first that it was lighter in the office than it had been when she laid down on the couch. It was still gloomy and dark, but it was somewhere in the daytime hours. The muscles in her legs were cramped from walking all night in the cold and then the way she’d been curled up on the sofa for some number of hours.

She was also warm, though the heavy blanket had fallen down over her shoulder. The cool air of the office was probably what had woken her. She reached for the blanket with one hand to tug it back up and started at the rough but familiar feel of the material.

She rolled onto her side and looked at it, only to realize it wasn’t a blanket, but rather Strike’s heavy coat. She sat up a bit more and let it fall down her torso. It was draped over her the whole length of the couch and all she could think was that she was fairly certain she hadn’t grabbed his coat from the coatrack the night before.

“Cormoran?”

As her voice echoed through the office the familiar sound of someone shifting in a chair echoed from the inner office and a moment later Strike appeared in the doorway.

“Morning,” he greeted her. “What time did you get back last night?”

“This morning,” she corrected him, “About five. Time is it now?”

“Near ten,” he told her. “Want a cuppa before you head home?”

Strike didn’t wait for an answer and moved to fill the kettle. Robin’s mind wasn’t completely awake, so she stared for a moment before speaking again.

“Barclay and Michelle were supposed to be here an hour ago. Did you move the meeting?”

Strike shook his head, “Cancelled. Snow.”

“It’s _still_ snowing?” Robin pushed up off the couch and moved to the window to see the near-empty Denmark Street below. There was a lot more snow than had been on the ground when she’d gotten back several hours earlier.

“Did you go out in this and slip?” she asked after a moment, turning back to the office.

Strike looked up at her.

“You’re favoring your leg a bit.”

“It’s just slick; you’ll be fine,” he told her. The kettle went off and he poured water into the two mugs.

Pushing away from the window she walked over to the kitchenette where Strike was pulling the milk out of the mini fridge. He added a splash to her mug, and she picked up hers with both hands before returning to the couch, pulling one leg up underneath herself as she sat.

“Why were you out until 5am?” Strike asked her, settling against Pat’s desk.

“Shakespeare was out with her girlfriends all night. I think I walked four miles in heels and saw every bar east of Russell Square. I don’t think she’s involved with Professor, though. She hardly touched her mobile all night, and when she did it was to snap selfies of herself and her friends, and to post them all to social media.”

She offered up her mobile to Strike with said Instagram account pulled up, at least one photo from every bar displaying beaming faces of the young student and a variety of her friends. 

Strike took a sip of his tea and waved off the mobile with his free hand.

“It’ll keep ‘til Monday.”

Robin took her phone back and sipped her own tea. She looked around for the things that she needed to gather before she got on her way home, reaching first for her boots.

“Well in that case I’m going to get moving so I can spend the rest of the weekend recovering in my own bed.”

-

“Bugger!”

Strike looked up from where he was still perched against the desk as Robin’s distinctive Yorkshire accent carried out from the inner office.

“They’ve shut down the tube.” Robin walked out into the main room with her mobile in hand. “I didn’t think the buses would be running in this but all the lines I’d take to get anywhere near Earl’s Court are completely stopped.”

“Shit,” Strike agreed, wracking his brain to remember the last time he could recall more than one or two lines being shut down. 

“Do you want to take the BMW?” he asked. “It’s down in the Q-Park Garage, if you want to make the trek down there.”

Robin looked at him doubtfully, “That car wouldn’t make it a mile in this much snow. Even if it would the Land Rover’s in my spot in Earl’s Court.”

“I’ll call you a taxi,” Strike told her, lifting his phone to his ear.

The first taxi service number chimed immediately to a message: _due to inclement weather we’re not scheduling service at this time_. So he tried another, and another, and another, all to quite similar effect. After the fifth call he put down his phone and sighed, looking at Robin.

“Bugger.” She said again.

She flopped back down onto the couch, ignoring the grunt it released. Strike watched an oddly helpless look cross her face momentarily before it was replaced with the calm and collected shield, the one he was used to.

“At least we both know the office isn’t the least comfortable place to sleep,” Strike joked, knowing as it was coming out that it would fall flat. They’d never really discussed that he was sleeping in his office those first few months, even though they both knew he was. And now Robin had taken a turn.

Robin managed half a smile as she pushed her hair out of her face. 

Strike finally pushed himself up off of the desk and reached for his discarded coat on the other half of the sofa, digging into one of its wide, deep pockets and coming up with a set of keys which he held out to her. 

“I’ve still got a few files to update,” he told her. “Go upstairs, get a shower. There’s food here when you’re done.”

Robin accepted the keys. Giving her a plan always gave her purpose and Strike watched her as she shed her own jacket and hung it, then plugged her mobile into the charging lead ever-present on the desk. Before moving to the door she retrieved the holdall that she’d taken to keeping in the office, various disguise pieces stored in it depending on need. Strike retreated to the inner office to fetch his laptop and move to the main office where he returned to note taking, though he could clearly hear Robin moving around on the floor above him, the sound of the water turning on in the shower. The idea of her in his flat was a strange one, although not unpleasant.

-

Robin closed the door to Strike’s flat behind her and leaned back against it. It was a rare occurrence for her to be upstairs, though she had occasionally stuck her head inside to wake him when he was running late, back when it was just the two of them running the agency.

That had been years ago. She stood in the doorway, taking in the cramped living space. A recliner that looked too small for Strike sat in front of a tiny television that she’d seen in the office years before. There was a miniature counter with a single electric burner and a miniature refrigerator, the same as the one in the office. A few chairs around a small table had been shoved into the corner.

She took a few steps deeper inside and, around a corner, could see Strike’s double bed, unmade as though he’d gotten up in a hurry. A book and a few pens laid on the miniscule bedside table, but aside from that the room was spartan. It felt a lot like the office had when she’d first started, lacking many personal touches. 

The bathroom, she knew, was small and cramped, but when she opened the door, she was pleased to find it was surprisingly clean. The cabinet under the sink had spare towels and while the water was hot, the pressure was rubbish. Nevertheless, she took a moment and just stood there, letting the scorching water wake up her. 

Strike’s all in one shampoo and body wash was all that the shower offered. It smelled clean and warm, with an undertone that was all Strike. She shivered as she rubbed it over bare skin, overwhelmingly aware that she was in Strike’s space.

The water began to run cold before she was ready. It was with reluctance that she turned off the water and toweled off, pulling on what acceptable clothing she’d found at the top of her holdall, the blouse and cardigan from the Bookclub case, and running a brush quickly through her hair. She felt cleaner, mostly. She laid the towel over one of the wooden chairs to dry.

Strike had moved with his laptop to the main room of the office and, their current files spread across the desk.

“Pat is going to kill you if you made adjustments to her chair,” Robin told him.

He frowned at her, and asked, “Does Pat actually realize that I’m her boss?”

Robin grinned, wondering if she should dig out the small bag with makeup that was buried somewhere at the bottom of her bag and make herself presentable.

But then Strike ran a hand through his already messy hair. “I’ve got soup and noodles in the kitchen. Which do you want?”

At the mention of food her stomach let out a rather loud grumble.

Strike laughed, “Noodles it is then.”

With effort he pushed himself out of Pat’s chair and strolled over to the kitchenette, pulling takeout containers out of the refrigerator, and placing one of them into the microwave. Robin reached back into the holdall, but rather than digging out her makeup kit she pulled out the bottle of paracetamol that she’d learned to carry with her. 

She handed it to Strike, wordlessly, as he pulled the plastic container out of the microwave, accepting the container of noodles and the plastic fork in return. There was a fresh cup of tea waiting on the desk as well. She dropped the bag by the couch and at back down with the strangest brunch she’d ever had.

-

The sound Robin made as she shoved the first bite of the sweet noodles into her mouth was practically sinful, shooting straight down Strike’s spine. He looked up from where he was shaking several pills out into his hand.

He remembered the clothes she was wearing; they’d been part of her mom-of-two disguise for the Bookclub case a few months before, the one where her mousy, brown wig had made her look startlingly like a number of Lucy’s group of neighborhood mothers. Although that wasn’t what the case made him think of. His mouth ran dry as he thought of his own involvement in that case, playing Robin’s husband, snogging in a fancy restaurant bar. It wasn’t doing his libido any favors.

“Did Shakespeare and her friends not go for food last night?” he asked, trying to change focus.

“None,” Robin replied, “But if you put away as much beer as any of them you wouldn’t be able to get out of bed today.”

“Not possible.” He deadpanned back to her.

Robin snorted. “You think that. You forget I’ve had to help you back from the Tottenham more than once.”

“Ah, that’s where I should have camped out for the blizzard then.”

Robin laughed, kicking her socked feet up onto the sofa, bringing another forkful of noodles up to her mouth, sucking them off the fork. 

Strike closed the Two Times file and started in on his own noodles as he pulled up Barclay’s email on the professor. The silence that settled between him and Robin was comfortable. It always was. 

Time passed more quickly than he would have expected for a day being stuck at Denmark Street. Robin opened her own laptop once she’d finished eating and seemed to be doing the same thing he was, reading the updates, emailing questions.

“Michelle and I are going to dig back into the Professor’s class rosters next week,” Robin told him absently, breaking into his own focus. “We don’t think he’s having an affair with Shakespeare or Marlowe. I’ve compiled a list of profiles if you want to get a jump start on them.”

Robin hadn’t looked up from the screen of her laptop as she’d spoken. Strike glanced up in time to watch her toss her hair back from her face, smoothing a stubborn piece behind her ear with her fingers. She was frowning at the screen intensely.

“How many did we rule out?”

“Thirty women,” Robin said. “That leaves sixteen other women, and thirty-two men we didn’t look at before. Barclay said he was _very_ friendly with the waiter when he was at dinner with his family.”

Strike paused, “I didn’t see that in his notes.”

“Michelle and I have been texting about the girls. I had a few questions for Sam.”

It was a good angle. The university had heavily insinuated that they were afraid of the Professor taking advantage of one of his female students due to his reputation on campus, the draw of young women to his classes. It seemed that universities had a quota for traditionally young and attractive English teachers for the female students to fawn over; Oxford had certainly had a few. It was where they had started, but the expansion was certainly worth exploring.

“Yeah, split up the list and send it out to the team. Tell them we’re not expecting work to be done on it until Monday.”

Robin’s eyes lifted to meet his. “Barclay is stuck at home with a two-year-old, and Hutchins and Michelle have spouses. I think we’re the only ones doing work this weekend.”

Strike brought one hand up and rubbed it across his eyes, suddenly tired.

The agency was Strike’s whole life; it had been for years. It was what he loved and what he was good at, and even when he was doing something completely unrelated, his mind could snap back to a case at the drop of a hat. He knew tangentially that the whole team wasn’t on the same page, and that the was is a job that allowed them the flexibility they needed to live their lives, but he often forgot in the day to day course of things. 

He considered himself lucky to have Robin, who, day after day displayed the same passion for the job he had,, sometimes to the point that Strike found himself having to remind her that taking care of herself and taking breaks were necessary to maintaining her focus. This was as close as she’d gotten to telling him the same aloud. Usually she would aim a certain _look_ at him when he was overworking himself particularly hard.

When he looked up again, he found that Robin was focused on her own notes. Strike guessed that she was not only splitting the list, but was, likely, also probably getting started on her own portion, so that she would have _something_ to provide once the week started. 

-

The snow was still falling heavily as daylight faded. Strike groaned as he stretched the back muscles that were cramped from spending most of the day in a chair staring at a computer screen. They were different muscles than would usually be sore considering Saturdays were often full of surveillance, but his knee was still sore, from the slip outside earlier.

The last thing he’d done before closing everything up for the night was check to see if the tube was running again. He’d even sent off a quick text to Wardle to see if there was any way to get Robin the four miles to her flat. The response had not been something he’d be willing to share with polite company.

He paced from the windows to the kitchenette counter, where he retrieved the bags from his earlier shopping trip. 

“Robin,” he said, just loud enough to fill the empty space of the office.

She looked up from where she was still absorbed in her own research.

“Fancy a curry?”

“Yeah,” her voice cracked a bit, he assumed from lack of use and she cleared her throat before continuing, “Yes, that’d be nice.”

“I’ll be upstairs then. Come up when you’re finished?” It felt both awkward and completely familiar.

“Give me twenty minutes.”

“No rush,” he told her before moving toward the door. 

The ascent up the stairs was easier than it would have been after a day of trudging across London, but the cold weather still brought out a certain soreness in his leg, a deep ache. The flat wasn’t in the worst shape, but he certainly hadn’t been expecting company. 

He grimaced and opened a beer before opening the meager pantry space and pulling out spices and cans. He took the pan down and turned on the hob. By the time Robin made it upstairs the smell of the curry sauce had filled the flat, which somehow made the small room feel brighter.

Robin stopped abruptly as she closed the door behind her, openly staring.

“What?” he asked.

“You’re cooking,” she stated.

Strike took her flat observation in stride, “You should be a detective.”

“I just,” she stepped further into the room, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you cook before. If I’m being honest, I thought you subsisted on takeaway.”

At that Strike raised an eyebrow, _it was going to be like that, was it?_

“You think this physique is the product of takeaway?” he asked, gesturing to his stocky middle.

Robin laughed. Not the fake giggle that she put on for cases and clients, but her real clear, full laugh. She stepped further into the flat, crossing to what he considered the kitchen area.

“Well then, how can I help?”

“There’s chicken in the fridge and a cutting board in that cupboard,” Strike nodded.

As Robin reached for the cutting board in the sparse higher cabinet, she pressed up to her toes to reach the last few inches. Strike realized that she hadn’t put shoes on to come upstairs. It felt oddly intimate, her in his space, nearly barefoot. Then she was at the table slicing chicken into strips for him to add to the sauce.

When she brought over the cutting board, she held it while Strike transferred the pieces into the pan. As he moved to switch places with her and fetch more ingredients he found the two of them brushing closely together in the small space.

“Sorry,” he murmured.

“It’s fine,” she assured him. 

Strike fetched cream from the fridge and mixed a cornstarch slurry to add once the chicken had finished cooking. He left them on the counter within reach for Robin and continued to move around the flat, getting plates and utensils, going for a second beer out of the fridge.

“Want anything to drink?” he asked Robin, “I’m all out of wine but there’s Doom Bar and I’ve got whisky tucked away somewhere.”

“I’ll have one of those,” Robin nodded toward the bottle in his hand. “Food’s nearly done.”

The table was small, with hardly room for two people. Strike passed Robin the container of rice that had come with his takeaway and moved the pan from the cook top to the table between them, letting her serve herself before adding a hearty portion to his own plate.

“The snow’s supposed to stop overnight. I should be able to get home in the morning once the tube or taxis are running again.”

Strike shrugged, “No rush. I’ll make up the bed with new sheets for you once we’ve eaten.”

Robin, who’d just taken a sip of her beer paused, “What are you on about?”

“Were you planning another all-nighter?”

“No, but I’m not taking your bed. I’ll sleep on the couch in the office again.”

Strike shook his head, but Robin wasn’t looking at him. Instead she was focused on the plate in front of her, taking a bite of the meal they’d prepared and making a noise of pleasure in her throat.

“This is good,” she said. 

The sound she’d made sent the same thrill through him that he’d last felt a few months before when she’d asked him to pose as her husband on the Bookclub case. She’d made a similar noise when he’d kissed her at the restaurant bar, though he was nearly certain it was something she hadn’t done consciously.

“Cormoran?”

“Sorry, what?” He blinked at her.

“I asked where you learned to cook like this? If your mother taught you?”

Strike smiled to himself, “Were you under the impression that Leda was the kind of mother who sat her kids down at a table for a home-cooked meal every night?”

Robin grinned back, “No, I suppose not.”

“Dave Polworth’s mom taught me a bit when I was in Cornwall, but I picked up most of it once I moved to London for university, and moving from place to place with SIB.” He looked at Robin, “I don’t suppose Linda Ellacott let you leave Marsham without a full range of cooking skills.”

“She didn’t let _any_ of us,” Robin laughed. “Stephen is far superior, but I haven’t starved yet, so I guess it’s served. Plus, there’s always takeaway.”

“Easier when you haven’t got a real kitchen,” Strike agreed, nodding at the space.

Robin stabbed a piece of chicken with her fork and ate slowly, making another pleased noise. 

Strike smiled to himself, resisting the sudden and unexplainable urge to reach across the table for her hand. 

-

Robin savored each bite of the curry on her plate. It was delicious and the first home-cooked meal that she’d had in weeks. They’d been so busy all winter that she’d barely been home enough to enjoy Max’s culinary skills, let along cook for herself. She’d enjoyed cooking with Srike The last time she’d actually cooked with someone had been… well, Matthew hadn’t actually been one for cooking together if she was there to do it herself.

She added more food to her emptied plate and reached for her beer, taking a long pull to cut through the spices.

Strike was focused on his plate when she looked over at him, using his fork to shovel rice into his mouth. He’d been lovely all day, trying to get her home and making her lunch and dinner, in addition to countless cups of tea. It wasn’t that she’d expected him to throw her out into the cold; they were friends after all, but he hadn’t made it seem like an imposition at all. It rather seemed like he’d liked her company.

Her legs were still tight from a night and day spent on the couch, and she stretched them out under the table, starting when her foot connected with something metal. 

“Oh Cormoran, I’m so sorry,” she hissed, pulling her foot back quickly, face flushing red with embarrassment.

“It’s fine,” he said around the food still in his mouth, swallowing before he spoke again, “Happens all the time. But if you wanted to give me a good kick you do know the other leg is the one with nerve endings, right?”

It was like him to make a joke, but she was still mortified. She carefully tucked her crossed ankles back under her chair, keeping them out of kicking distance of Strike’s leg.

Finally, it seemed that both of them had reached the point of being full. Robin scooped up the pan and their plates. 

“Let me clean up? You cooked.”

“We cooked.”

Robin’s brow furrowed as she looked down at where he was still sitting.

“I’ll wash,” she told him. “You can dry.”

Without waiting for a response Robin moved back to the counter, spooning the remains of the curry into a bowl and covering it with foil while filling the sink. As she started to scrub the pan Strike appeared next to her, pressed back against her side in the small space.

A towel appeared in his hands as he accepted the pan as she finished washing it and started in on the plates.

“So, what would you usually be doing with your Saturday night?” Strike asked her.

“If I’m not following university students or one of Two Times’ many girlfriends, you mean?”

Strike chuckled, “Exactly.”

“Well, I’ve still been knitting. But I knew I’d be out and about all last night, so I didn’t bring it with me. Aside from that, wine and bad television probably.”

“Well,” Strike sighed with a tilt of his head, “I have beer and the telly picks up a few channels. You’re more than welcome to them.”

Robin turned her head to look at him, “Thanks.”

She found that she really meant it. She’d felt like she’d crossed some invisible line, all day, and was somehow invading Strike’s space. At the same time, she felt perfectly at home with him, even in such a small space, the two of them pressed together in shared activity, his smell of smoke and musk mingling with everything and making her relax.

When they finished washing up Robin waved off Strike’s offer of another beer and instead put on water for a cup of tea and excused herself back downstairs to retrieve the holdall she’d been lugging back and forth all day.

She knew, without a doubt, that if she brought her laptop upstairs Strike would give her his oft repeated lecture about taking time away from work, the hypocrite. But if she was being honest, the Facebook profiles of the Professor’s students were all starting to blur together. Sorting through the clothes in the holdall, figuring out if she had anything more comfortable to sleep in, that would actually help.

Strike passed her a prepared cup of tea when she returned. Robin thanked him and dragged one of the kitchen chairs over next to the armchair in front of the television, that was on, set to an older movie, one she could only imagine they’d both watched on a lazy weekend a dozen times.

Strike joined her a moment later, settling into his own chair.

“D’you mind if I smoke?” he asked her.

“It’s your flat,” she told him, matter-of-factly. She’d almost never objected to his smoking anywhere. It was nice that he still asked.

Strike lit a Benson & Hedges, tipping open one of the small windows just enough to air out the smoke, not enough to let in the snow, though the frigid air it let in made Robin shiver.

She wrapped her cardigan more tightly around herself. It was one of the things she always kept on hand after the Bookclub case had closed; it was surprisingly warm. 

She was, however, glad as she dug the previous night’s dress out of the bag to re-fold it, that she had chosen the metallic blue, rather than the black and white floral. Her on-hand dress for the past few months had been the dress she’d worn during the Bookclub case, the night where Strike had played her smitten husband, and kissed her soundly to catch their marks’ attention. Her lips still tingled when she thought about it, and whenever she pulled the dress out, she thought she could still smell the lingering lavender scent of Strike’s aftershave.

The dress was set aside as a news update popped up in place of commercial, warning of dropping overnight temperatures as the snow, finally, tailed off.

“Of course,” Strike muttered, “Everything’ll be ice in the morning.”

Robin was already making a note to see what Strike had on hand before she left the following morning. They didn’t need him tumbling on an uncleared pavement and sidelining himself for a week.

Bobbi’s skirt and strategically ripped t-shirt came out of Robin’s bag next, useless for the current weather, then a blazer she’d been looking for a few weeks earlier. That would need ironing.

Finally, she hit gold, a pair of dark leggings were balled up in the bottom of the holdall. They’d been a uniform for tailing one of Two Times’ women, one who spent countless hours at the gym. Which meant… yes, there was also a worn, slightly large t-shirt as well. Robin fought the urge to crow in triumph. Sleeping in the jeans she was wearing for a second night was not something she had been looking forward to.

She caught Strike watching her out of the corner of his eye and quickly shoved the folded clothes back into the bag.

“If you’re tired, I told you, I can make up the bed.”

Robin leveled him with a gaze. “And I told you I’ll sleep on the sofa in the office again. It’s barely four feet long; you won’t fit on it.”

“I’ve still got the camp bed in the office-”

“ _Strike_ ,” Robin interrupted. “The couch will be fine. I can sleep there comfortably without putting you out. It’s just one night. I’ll be fine, I promise.”

“Alright then,” he acquiesced. “If you change your mind let me know, wake me if you need to.”

Robin settled in then, picking up her tea and slouching a bit in the chair, against the arm of the recliner, to pay more attention to the movie. After a moment Strike shifted, draping an arm across the back of the kitchen chair she was in, providing her more of a corner to lean into and Robin took the offered comfort. 

By the time the movie ended she was sure she’d nodded off a few times, missed a few key scenes. The barely five hours of sleep she’d gotten the night before finally catching up with her.

“I think I’m going to go to bed,” she said, pushing herself upright into a sitting position. Strike pulled his arm back from where it had been wrapped around her shoulders, probably holding her upright as she’d dozed. She flushed pink at the thought as she stood up, rubbing a hand over her face to try to hide it.

“Do you have an extra blanket I could use?”

“Of course.” Strike’s voice was quiet, as he stubbed out a cigarette and pushed himself up from the chair, disappearing around the wall into the makeshift bedroom, and returning with a soft, neatly folded blanket, which he handed to her carefully.

“I’ll leave the door to the flat unlocked,” he told her. “Come up if you need anything. I mean it.”

“Thank you, Cormoran,” Robin replied.

She shifted her holdall over her shoulder and made her way back downstairs.

The office lacked some of the warmth it had exhibited all day, now that it was empty. She changed quickly into her leggings and t-shirt, which, while more comfortable, weren’t quite as warm as her jeans and sweater had been. She quickly turned off the lights and plugged in her mobile to keep it within reach.

Burrowing under the soft blanket Strike had given her on the couch, Robing pulled up the weather app on her mobile, frowning at the snow and ice icons that showed through the nighttime hours. The fake leather of the couch was frigid. She shifted, trying to wrap the blanket completely around herself, cutting off all of the places where cold was seeping in. It seemed impossible to get them all at the same time.

She dropped her phone back to the floor, tugging her arm back into the confines of the blanket, ignoring the noisy protests that the sofa made each time she moved.

Robin missed her bed at home, the possibility of Wolfgang curled up along her side if Max wasn’t home. Something generating warmth other than her own body heat radiating in her makeshift sleeping bag would have been divine. In the back of her mind she wondered if it was too late to switch places with Strike. 

The only redeeming quality of the office was that the desktop was still on, creating a hum of white noise, and the faint red light from the bar across the street that seeped in from the inner-office. It all created the perfect sleepy atmosphere. 

Robin closed her eyes and relaxed, finally starting to get warm and to sink back into the lazy feeling that had enveloped her while she’d been watching tv with Strike upstairs.

Suddenly she was wide awake. Robin wasn’t sure how long she’d been asleep or what had woken her, but there was something. It hit her abruptly, the office was dark and completely silent.

“No,” she whispered to herself, fumbling out of the tangle of blankets for her mobile. The charging icon in the corner of the screen was dark.

She flopped back to the sofa, which let out a loud whoosh of air. “Bugger.”

-

Alone in his flat Strike finally removed his prothesis, rubbing cream into the stump of his leg which was still sore from his trip out into the snow earlier in the day. Rather than stripping to his boxers he left on a t-shirt and a pair of sweatpants, on the off chance that Robin would make another visit upstairs.

Moving around the flat was manageable with one leg, all the walls and surfaces providing ample support. He still moved slowly, trying to avoid waking Robin with the noise. He poured a glass of water and swallowed a few paracetamol as he readied for bed, hoping to avoid an undue level of soreness over the following few days. Though it would take days for the snow to be fully cleared throughout London they’d all need to be ready to get back to their work Monday at the latest. He’d have to be careful on his feet.

Switching off the television, then the main lights, Strike hopped to his bed. He pulled the blankets up over himself and settled back against the pillows that he’d propped up. Despite being woken early that morning he was not yet ready for sleep, his mind roiling with the thought that Robin was asleep mere feet away from him.

He picked up the latest James Ellroy novel, which had been laying unread on his bedside table for nearly a month and thumbed to the first page. Details of the attack on Pearl Harbor, followed closely by blatant racism and the murder of a Japanese family unfolded on the pages in front of him, capturing his attention and allowing time to slip by.

He was jolted out of his focus nearly an hour later, when the lights fizzled and blinked. He looked up from the pages warily as the light flickered back on. He waited a moment and turned back to his pages. Before he’d gotten through another half a page the lights abruptly cut off again. He waited a moment; they didn’t come back on.

“Fuck,” he muttered.

Denmark Street had been in a constant state of construction since Strike had opened his office. Power outages, as a result, were not rare, but it also meant that he was experienced with how quickly the heat would fade. Dog-earring the page of his book, he set it back down, and tugged the heavy blankets up higher. 

The flat was too quiet without the electric hum of the lamp, or any of the other appliances. Eyes closed he rolled onto one side, cursing winter. He hoped Robin was asleep, or at least that the blanket he’d given her was warm enough that the power flickering out wouldn’t wake her. Unfortunately, he knew the flat would feel sub-arctic within an hour, which was not helping him settle into sleep.

The creak of the door caught his attention and he pushed himself up onto an elbow, looking out into the main room.

“Cormoran,” Robin’s quiet call echoed across the flat, “Are you awake?”

“Yeah,” Strike replied. “I’m here.”

He could hear her softly padding across the flat and through the doorway to his room. He couldn’t help but grin as she stopped in the doorway, looking sleep-soft with the blanket wrapped around her shoulders, her hair mussed from where he could imagine it had been pressed against a pillow on the farting sofa.

“Alright?” he asked, when, after a moment, she hadn’t said anything.

Robin shook her head, “Do you still have that sleeping bag? The office is an ice box.”

“Sorry,” Strike said, with sympathy, “I think it’s still up in Cornwall at Joan and Ted’s.”

“Another blanket?” she asked instead.

Strike hesitated, all of the blankets he had were currently on his bed. He could give another one to Robin and they could both spend the night cold on their own. Or…

He made the decision much more quickly than he’d like to admit and folded back the covers on the right side of the bed.

“Add that blanket to the bed and get in.”

He couldn’t quite make out Robin’s facial expression from across the room, but she didn’t move.

“Robin, it’s only going to get colder in here and in the office. We won’t get power back before morning; Denmark Street isn’t a priority when there are outages.”

“I can just go back downstairs. I’m sure I’ll be fine once I fall back to sleep.”

“If it helps, you can just pretend we’re Luke and Violet Jones again.”

That, at least, seemed to catch her off guard. She let out a surprised laugh and took a step into the room, pausing at the foot of the bed for a moment, before putting down the heavy blanket within his reach and moving around to the side of the bed.

Strike scooted over to give her ample room next to him on the bed, flicking the blanket out to spread it over the layers already there. Out of the corner of his eye he watched Robin tuck her legs under the blankets and pull them up to her shoulder with a shiver.

Instinctively he moved closer again, helping to adjust the covers over her, his hands accidentally brushing hers.

“Fuck, your hands are like ice!”

Strike drew both of her hands in between his own, rubbing them to warm them up. Robin, for her part, rolled toward him voluntarily, scooting across the bed.

“Poor circulation,” she muttered, by way of explanation, “ _Fuck’s_ sake, how are you so warm? It’s not fair. Why are men always warm?”

That startled a laugh out of Strike as he dropped her hands. They locked eyes for a brief moment and Robing found herself shuffling even closer, right up against Strike, who dropped an arm over her waist. The last time they’d been pressed together so closely had indeed been that very case, when he’d kissed her like a drowning man searching for air. He tried to clear that memory from his mind as quickly as it appeared; they’d have problems if he didn’t.

“You know,” Robin said, after a long moment of silence, “With the power out like this, Luke and Violet would probably be juggling keeping the kids warm and happy as well.”

“Mmmm…” Strike mused. “Don’t you think they’d be on holiday with their grandparents? Isn’t school off this week?”

Part of him was wondering suddenly if he should have called Lucy to check in, keeping three adolescent boys in line in their small house, possibly without power. A much bigger part of him, though, was amused that Robin was keeping up with the ruse.

“I suppose that’s a reasonable assumption,” she agreed. “They wouldn’t have had time alone since moving to London and I can only imagine the holidays were stressful.”

She suddenly let out a violent shiver.

“Are you still cold?” Strike asked, hauling her still closer with his arm before he realized what he was doing. Once he caught himself he moved to let her go.

“No” She caught his arm, keeping it around her, “It’s fine. I just got a chill.”

She avoided eye contact as she said it, a tactic she’d employed before when she wasn’t quite telling him the whole truth.

“Do you always make up such elaborate backstories for your characters?” he asked, grinning as he tried to put her at ease.

Robin shrugged, “It’s easier to answer questions if you’ve got a backstory. Learned that after the first time with Venetia and Bobbi.”

“That was a good one. Violet,” he told her. “You were very convincing; always knew exactly what she would do and say.”

“Thank you,” Robin blushed at the compliment. In the past few moments they’d both fully relaxed, heads on Strike’s pillow as they conversed.

After a moment of quiet she brought a hand up between them, placing it on his chest to gain his attention.

“Cormoran,” she began, “Why did you – When we were at the restaurant, why did you apologize before you kissed me?”

It had been nearly three months since the event that Robin was referencing, three months where Strike had thought back to that moment _constantly_. It sounded like, just maybe, Robin had thought about it as well.

He shrugged. “I know we were playing at being husband and wife, but we didn’t talk about any kind of plan for that situation beforehand. It was the first thing that came to mind. I thought I should apologize; it’s not like you’d want to kiss a fat, old bloke like me.”

Robin was looking at him carefully, biting her lip as she examined his face.

“What?”

“That’s not exactly true,” she said.

-

Robin had no idea where her sudden bravery had come from, what had possessed her to make such a direct statement, but the moment the words were out of her mouth both she and Strike froze. She was very aware of every part of her pressed against the warmth of Strike’s torso, and his hand splayed hot across the small of her back.

“Robin.”

His voice was quiet and tender and tinged with something altogether new that Robin didn’t recognize. He was staring back at her intently, pupils blown wide as his tongue flicked out over his lips involuntarily.

Strike swallowed thickly before he spoke again, “You’re saying you’d-”

“Like you to kiss me?” The words came out in a rush. “Yes. If that’s something you want.”

Strike didn’t respond, and Robin was afraid that her bravery had been misplaced. 

Then, his hand lifted from where it was spread across her lower back. She thought, for a moment, that he was going to roll away, but instead his thumb brushed lightly over her cheek and his hand resettled cradling the juncture at the back of her head. 

There wasn’t much space between them, but it seemed to take him ages to close the distance. As his lips finally brushed hers Robin let her eyes flicker closed. It was nothing like the kiss at the restaurant. Strike pressed a few feather light, closed-mouth kisses against her lips, his thumb stroking gentle circles right behind her ear. She pressed forward against him as he finally slotted their lips together properly, sighing into the kiss as she finally relaxed.

Strike kissed her slowly, as though he was methodically categorizing every tiny detail in her response, every new tilt of his mouth against hers, or sound she made in reaction. 

As he gently brushed his lips against hers again, Robin dragged her teeth deliberately across his lower lip. A growl echoed up from his throat and he nipped back at her lip in response. It was an intoxicating feeling. Robin finally released her grip on his shirt, sliding her arm around his back, raking her nails into the hair at the base of his neck.

Finally, Strike’s tongue slipped along her lips and into her mouth, flicking against hers and drawing it back with him. He tasted like curry and tobacco. He continued the back and forth, tracing the inside of her lips and rolling his tongue against hers in turn. When he decisively pulled back it was just far enough to rest his forehead against Robin’s, both of them breathing hard.

Strike was the first to regain his breath.

“Fuck, Robin,” he rasped.

Robin’s chest felt full, not with anxiety, but with relief and something… something bursting with pleasure. She pressed her lips quickly and lightly to the corner of his mouth again. Her grip was still tight around his back.

“I’m not cold anymore,” she whispered into the space between them.

The laugh that he let out was more of a forced breath. He moved his hand from her face, knuckles dragging down her back as far as they could without dislodging her arm.

“Clearly I’m not the only one who wanted to do that,” Robin continued bluntly.

“No,” Strike admitted easily. There was no going back. “You’re not.”

He wanted to do it again. He wanted to kiss her until he knew every inch of her. In honesty, he wanted a lot of things.

“You can…” Robin trailed off, searching for the right word.

Strike met her eyes for a moment, loaded looks passing between them before he shifted back from her, disentangling from each other and freeing the arm that had been trapped between his chest and the mattress.

“If you want me to stop, I want you to tell me,” he told her.

She nodded, “I will.”

Strike propped himself up on his arm and leaned back into Robin, now over her slightly. Instead of leaning back in to kiss her mouth he lifted his hand to the collar of her t-shirt, sliding the wide neck gently over her shoulder and leaning down to kiss along the pale expanse of her neck and shoulder, dragging the stubble of his thin beard against the unblemished skin.

“ _Oh_ ,” Robin breathed.

Her fingers were in his hair again, nails scratching against his scalp, tugging lightly.

He dragged his teeth over her collarbone, just once, relishing the breathy noise that she made and kissed slowly up her neck to that place just behind her ear where his thumb had made its home when he’d first kissed her.

Robin giggled, arching her back as his breath tickled her ear, cutting off abruptly as he caught her mouth with his again. As their lips slid wetly against each other she tugged at the back of his shirt.

He pulled out of the kiss and looked her in the eye, silently questioning. Robin nodded, not saying anything but trying to convey her certainty. Strike sat up, peeling his t-shirt up and over his head, tossing it blindly away.

As he leaned back in, Robin ran her hands up over his chest, through the hair that had occasionally peeked out from his shirt the entire time she’d known him. As he leaned back into her space, she ran her hands down his triceps, which flexed in a satisfying way as he planted his hands on either side of her before kissing her again.

As he lowered himself to her again his hand slid up over her hip and settled on her waist, hot, against her skin. . Robin thought briefly of how she’d thought a moment like this with a man would send her into a spiral, trigger a panic attack. Even with Matthew she’d never felt so relaxed, so safe. Strike made her feel safe. He always had.

And then Strike’s thumb skirted across the underside of her breast. She sucked in a surprised breath, arching her back to press against him. AS he moved, she felt his arousal pressing against her hip. It touched off something warm and tight in her stomach.

He continued to ruck up her shirt, palming her breast carefully, and squeezing lightly . Robin nipped at his lip, letting out a heated moan. When he pulled back there was an uncertain look across his features, but she simply reached down to pull at the hem of her shirt. He helped guide it up and off, lowering his head back to her neck and letting his hand trace across the newly revealed skin.

Robin reached down, taking the hand that Strike was running lightly over the curve of her stomach and dragged it back up to her breast. She could feel him grinning against her neck as he cupped her in his hand again, rolling a nipple experimentally between his fingers. 

“Strike,” she gasped, her hips grinding up against his. His hips pressed right back against hers and he groaned against her neck. 

Strike sucked in a deep breath through his nose, holding it for a moment before releasing it slowly. His hips were still shifting against hers despite his efforts to calm himself down. He pressed a kiss to the underside of her jaw before shifting down, letting his tongue flick out to wet her nipple before sucking it into his mouth. 

He couldn’t quite describe the sound that Robin made but knew that he wanted to hear it again. He pulled off with a satisfying pop and kissed down her stomach, thumbs hooking under the band of her leggings. He looked up at her, arching his eyebrow in question. 

Robin lifted her hips in invitation.

Strike grinned broadly, pressing a soft kiss to her hip before tugging the leggings and her knickers down with one pull. He let out a huff as the snug pants stuck around her calves as he dragged them down. Robin’s laugh was sultry as she leaned into his space to help him push them off.

With Robin within reach again he couldn’t help pulling her into another kiss, sucking her bottom lip into his mouth as he let his hand slide from her bare thigh to her waist.

“Lay back?”

It was a question, a request, a chance to back out of this. Robin sat back, giving his hand a squeeze. 

Strike dipped his head to kiss the pale expanse of her stomach as he stroked his fingers up and down her thigh. Slowly, he drew his hand up between her legs, his thumb gently spreading her lips, finding her wetter than he’d expected and he looked up to watch her as he flicked his thumb up and over her clit. Eyes closed; she was biting her lip.

He rubbed his thumb in a slow, experimental circle relishing the shuddering breath she sucked in. He pressed a kiss against the inside of her thigh, teasing her with a flick of his tongue.

“Cormoran,” she whined, her hips lifting and her thighs shaking.

He lowered his head and flicked his tongue over her core, lapping slowly as her hips shifted minutely in an attempt to hold back.

“Cormoran, please,” Robin gasped, her fingers dropping into his hair, tugging sharply.

With no preamble Strike closed his mouth over her clit, sucking lightly, at the same time slipping two fingers into her. Robin keened, arching her hips off the bed, his arm across her waist holding her down. He curled his fingers inside her, stroking hard as his tongue alternated between gentle flicks and increased pressure.

Robin’s whole body was on fire as Strike touched her. She flexed her hand in his hair, her other hand curling into the pillow under her head as she tried not to arch off the bed in ecstasy. There was pressure building low in her abdomen and she was certain a string of incomprehensible gibberish was falling out of her mouth.

He twisted his fingers in a way that made Robin’s mind go blank for a moment. His mouth and fingers both increased in speed and pressure and Robin felt it was too much and not enough all at once. Without warning she tipped over the edge, her body shuddering and her knees gripping around his shoulders as she rode out her orgasm.

When she came back to herself Strike was stroking her hip, propped up on one elbow.

“Come here,” she murmured, wanting him close, and as he crawled up over her she slid her arm up and over his neck, pulling him into another kiss. 

His mouth tasted like her; it gave her a thrill. He was still hard where their hips were slotted together and held himself tense, like he was trying not to thrust against her.

Robin slipped her hand down between them, palming him through his sweatpants and the way he groaned made the hair on the back of her neck stand on end. 

“We don’t have to-” Strike started.

At the same time Robin spoke, cutting him off, “Why are you still wearing pants?”

Strike looked at her for a moment, searching for something in her face before rolling off of her completely for the first time since he’d kissed her. Robin was worried that she’d pushed too far for a moment, but as she watched he fumbled in a drawer in the bedside table, then pushed the sweats down over his hips, kicking them away with his good leg.

Robin felt the fire again in her abdomen when he rolled back toward her, his cock hard and leaking. She reached down between them again, letting her hand slide over the head of his cock a few times before sliding all the way to the base and back.

“Fuck,” Cormoran hissed, biting back a moan at the touch. It took him a moment to regain his higher brain function enough to tear at the condom packet. His hips were thrusting into her hand of their own accord and it was a moment before he had the composure enough to drop his hand to hers, stopping her movement.

When she released him the loss of her touch was akin to agony. He rolled on the condom, stroking himself slowly a few times, steeling himself.

Robin was the one to tug him back down, nearly on top of her, pulling him into a sloppy, open-mouthed kiss. The wet slide brought him back to touching her, to the sounds she’d made for him moments earlier, that he wanted nothing more than to hear again.

He pulled back out of the kiss as he lined himself up against her, looking her in the eye as he pushed in slowly. Robin breathed out a moan that shot straight down his spine as he sank slowly into her until he bottomed out with a grunt. For an instant he froze there, letting himself feel the tight, wet heat of Robin around him.

His signal to move again was a tentative roll of Robin’s hips, pushing up against his own, pushing him impossibly further into her. Looking down at where they were joined, he drew her leg up to hitch over his waist. Her other leg followed of its own accord. 

Slowly he pulled back, just enough to smoothly push back in. And again, setting an easy pace, with no urgency, letting Robin meet him. He closed his eyes pressing a lingering kiss against her collarbone, only opening them again as her hands slid up over his shoulders, digging in.

“Please, Cormoran.” Her breathy moan caused his hips to stutter.

He kissed her neck before bringing his face to hers, whispering into her ear, “What do you need?”

“More,” she whined, her voice breaking.

At that he pulled back nearly out of her before thrusting back in a bit more enthusiastically than before, relishing the frantic sound that she let out in reply. On his next thrust he swallowed the sound into a kiss.

With Strike kissing her and thrusting deeply into her Robin felt like she was floating, pleasure sparking through every nerve in her body. She met each push of his hips with one of her own, greedily wanting even more, as much of him as she could possibly take, using her legs to pull his hips down harder against hers.

Their kiss was mostly an exchange of moans and other sounds of elation, mouths sliding wetly against each other as hips snapped together. The only sounds filling the flat were the ones they were making. Pressed together from chest to hip, there was no way to have more of him. 

His hips stuttered in a sloppy, involuntary rhythm, and Robin tightened her hold on him. That fire was starting to build again; she was nearly there. And then Strike slid a hand under the small of her back, barely lifting her off the bed. The new angle changed things so that he was hitting just the right spot and on his next thrust she felt the electric thrill of tipping over the edge.

The feel of Robin coming undone under him was incredible and with a low moan he followed, his breath hitching against her jaw as his hips rocked through the aftershocks. 

He felt Robin still gasping for breath when she finally loosened her hold on his shoulder and hair. He lowered her back down, pulling out carefully, pulling back enough to allow them both room to clean themselves up. Dealing with the condom was easy enough, tossing it away into the trash bin. 

When he rolled back Robin was propped up in one elbow, watching him. She wasn’t dressed, nor was she taking care to cover herself, though goosebumps were rising on her arms. He tugged the blanket up to cover her again.

Strike wasn’t sure what to say to break the silence, so he just leaned across the space between them to place a light kiss to her forehead and then to press his own forehead to hers. They sat there, just breathing each other’s air for a moment before Robin finally spoke.

“I should, ummm…” she nodded toward the bathroom.

He mumbled something in the affirmative, handing Robin a shirt as she pushed the blankets back, not sure whose it was.

It was clearly the one he’d been wearing previously. Robin nearly swam in it as she got out of bed and crossed the flat. As the door to the bathroom closed, he let himself flop back to the bed, both unable to believe what had just transpired and longing for Robin to be back in bed with him as soon as she could.

As Robin washed her hands under the cold water running from the sink, she took a deep breath and looked at herself in the mirror. Her skin was still flushed, and her hair was a mess. She tugged it back into a neat ponytail and swiped her damp hands over her cheeks.

What had just happened didn’t seem real. It had most certainly happened, she still felt as though someone had set off a volley of fireworks throughout her entire body. 

In the time they’d spent exploring each others’ bodies however, the remaining heat had seeped out of the flat. The linoleum was like ice under her bare feet. It didn’t leave much time to stand there and let her nerves take over.

Thankfully as she crawled back under the blankets on the bed there was a cocoon of warmth. Strike’s eyes were closed but his arm was draped across her side of the mattress. She slid slowly into the space under his arm, curling against his chest.

“Your hands are cold again,” he said lightly.

“The hot water’s out,” she told him apologetically, drawing her hand back.

Strike caught her hand with his, drawing it back to where it had settled before. He rolled his head in her direction to look her in the eye.

“You okay?”

“I’m fantastic,” Robin told him. “Are you okay?”

Strike smiled, the rare wide grin the people only startled out of him on rare occasions. He leaned in, kissed her forehead again.

-

Strike woke the next morning to a mechanical hum. Without sitting up he could see sunlight shining in through the skylight in the main room. He reached over and switched off the lamp he’d had on while reading the night before.

As he rolled back, he found Robin curled up, still asleep. Her shoulder, clad in his shirt, peeked up from beneath the blankets. Slowly, he shifted closer, draping his arm over her waist. She made a content noise but didn’t wake.

He settled himself comfortably against her back, relaxing in hopes that he’d be able to doze a bit more, before forcing himself out of bed in the still frigid flat.

When Robin finally stirred some time later, she shifted, her hand coming up to wrap around his wrist. He thought for a moment that she was going to push him away, but she just pulled his arm further around her.

“Morning,” she greeted quietly.

“Hey,” he yawned against her shoulder.

She stretched, pushing back against his chest before rolling over to face him.

“The power’s back on?”

“It is,” he confirmed, his arm resettling over her side, hand splaying across the small of her back.

“Mmm… I wonder if the trains are up and running.”

Strike’s heart fell a little at the notion that her first thought up in waking was to leave. Not that he had room to complain or ask anything of her.

“What are you doing today?” she asked him. Her fingers were running lightly across the arm he had around her.

Strike struck for nonchalant, “Well, I think I’ll avoid the snow, just have a bit of a lie in.”

“Do you mind if I join you?”

It then struck him that she was in the exact same mindset as he was, unsure of where they stood, looking to him for… _something_.

“That’d be nice,” he told her.

He leaned down into her space and when she didn’t pull away he pressed his mouth softly against hers, letting her be the one to press back, to slot their mouths together and suck his lip into her mouth. Her tongue darted lightly into and back from his mouth before she pulled back. The cheeky grin that pulled across her face promised more to come.

Before anything else though, Strike knew they’d both want to get up briefly, get themselves sorted so they could comfortably spend the bulk of the day in bed. His bladder was being rather demanding and as he sat up, pulling on the boxers that had spent the night on the floor, his stomach let out a characteristic grumble.

“I hope you bought biscuits yesterday,” Robin said, propping herself upright against the pillows.

“I’m sure I can manage some breakfast,” Strike replied, tugging himself upright.

Morning were usually easier to manage without his prothesis. He left it propped against the wall and used the low ceiling and wall to make his way in the direction of the kitchen.

He stopped in the doorway to look back at her.

“Tea?” he asked.

-

-

**Author's Note:**

> What, all the albums I quote are from between 2007-2012-ish? Yeah, clearly those were my glory days.


End file.
